Miguel tried again, like a simpering fool.
“I guess everything’s okay, then, huh? You want me to take care of anything?”
Krista turned back to the pot because she hated the weight of Medina’s eyes. His body was broad and hairless. He rippled with muscles, but he was not young and wasn’t clean. Loose skin stretched and folded in pale ways she found obscene.
Medina finally gave Miguel an order.
“Check the garage. Make sure Orlato didn’t drop something on the floor. Use the bleach.”
Miguel hurried past Marisol into the garage.
Krista stared into the pot as it filled, and felt Medina approach. She felt his body heat. He stopped directly behind her.
“Move.”
He used his body to nudge her aside, then rinsed his hands and forearms under the running water, depositing his filth into the beans.
“Gimme the soap.”
He squeezed a blue ribbon up and down his forearms and over his hands, and worked up a thick lather. He rinsed the suds into the beans, shut the tap, and faced her. Water dripped from his arms onto the floor.
“Dry me.”
She glanced up for Marisol or the Mantis or Miguel, but they were alone.
“Dry me. You don’t see I’m wet?”
He came closer, so she moved farther away, but still couldn’t meet his eyes.
“You should be nice to me, girl.”
She stepped away, but he grabbed her by the neck so fast she fell into him, and looked up to see his jagged teeth. She slapped at him, and tried to twist free, but he laughed. Then he stopped laughing, and punched her hard in the face.
Krista fell without knowing it. She bounced off the counter, hit the floor, and looked up at him through a sparkling haze. He seemed very tall, with long legs and longer arms, and his voice echoed from far away.
“It’s gonna be good, little puta.”
He reached from the ceiling with a rubber arm, Krista threw up her hands to ward him off, and Jack came out of nowhere. He flew over her and slammed into Medina like a mongrel dog.
Jack’s impact knocked Medina backward. They spun through the kitchen, wrapped together, all arms and legs. Jack made grunting sounds, and found her eyes briefly as he spiraled past.
“Garage.”
Krista struggled to her feet, but did not run for the garage. She grabbed the pot from the stove and swung at Medina, but the Mantis rushed in, and lifted her off her feet. Then Miguel and the other guards poured in, and crowded the kitchen to watch.
Medina wrestled Jack to the floor and punched him over and over, his fist rising and falling like a piston.
Krista fought to break away, but the Mantis held tight.
“Stop it! You’re killing him-!”
She pleaded, and tried to help, but the beating went on.
“Stop!”
Then the garage door opened, and the man with the ponytail entered.
Miguel and the Mantis immediately pulled Medina to his feet. He fought them until he saw the new man, then immediately stopped struggling.
Krista pleaded.
“He’s hurt! He needs help! Look at him, please!”
Jack was belly down on the floor. Blood trickled from both ears down the sides of his face.
“He needs a doctor! Can’t you see? Please!”
The new man gazed at Jack, then frowned at Medina.
“You are costing me money.”
“Discipline problem. You have to keep them in line.”
The tall man looked at each guard in turn, then considered Krista. His expression was so thoughtful she felt encouraged he would help, but then he turned to Medina.
“The dead are worth nothing. Do you see? Get rid of him before the others see him, and clean up this mess.”
Krista didn’t realize what the tall man’s order meant until he and Rojas started away. Jack was hurt, they had no doctor, so they were going to kill him and get rid of his body.
Krista blurted out the one thing she prayed would save his life.
“He’s rich! They are rich! This is how his mother is away so long!”
The tall man glanced at Rojas, who offered what he knew.
“This is the one whose mother is in China. There is no one to call until she returns.”
Krista kept pushing.
“She takes these trips always. My mama says they have much money. If he dies, you will get nothing.”
The tall man thought for a moment, then nodded at Medina.
“We shall see. Do what you can for him.”
The tall man and Rojas disappeared down the hall as Miguel and another guard bent over Jack. The Mantis took Krista’s arm, but Medina leaned close with his jack-o’-lantern face.
“As soon as he’s gone, you will make the first call. You gonna call Mama. I’m gonna make you scream real good.”
He leered even wider, then told the Mantis to take her to her room.
Krista was scared, but relieved. She had told them one secret about Jack, and it had saved him. But she had come dangerously close to telling them who Jack was related to, and about the army of people who were looking for him. Jack and Krista had agreed on the night they were taken they couldn’t tell the bajadores who Jack was related to. If these men found out, they would kill him. Jack and Krista could only pray she found them quickly.
The Mantis returned Krista to her room.
The tall man with the ponytail left one hour later.
Medina was good at his word.
Krista made the first call.
He used the terrible teeth, and made her scream.
27
Nancie Stendahl
Stendahl lowered the windows on her rental car to let in the night-blooming jasmine. Nonstop D.C. to L.A., four hours in the air, hit the ground running, forty minutes later, here she was driving up Kenter Canyon in Brentwood, California. Home. Stendahl had come home because of a call she received from the chief of the Coachella Police Department four days earlier.
Nancie loved the drive up Kenter at night, when the smells of jasmine, fennel, and eucalyptus bloomed, and coyotes and deer might be framed by her headlights. The narrow street began on Sunset Boulevard, but climbed steeply through dense trees and affluent homes until star-field views of the city stretched south and east to the horizons. Nancie Stendahl had missed this drive since her transfer two years earlier to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’s Washington headquarters, but she didn’t miss the crappy cell reception.
“Gonna lose you, Tone. I’m on my way up to Bonnie’s.”
“Can you hear me?”
“So far, but not for long.”
Assistant Deputy Director Nancie Stendahl represented the ATF on a congressional task force that included the FBI, ICE, DEA, and the state and local law enforcement agencies that lined the U.S.-Mexican border. This task force was charged with containing cartel gang activity on the Mexican side of the border. Tony Nakamura was her liaison officer with the committee. Normally, the Bureau would have provided a car to someone of Nancie’s rank, but this trip was personal.
Nakamura went on.
“I said, the senator’s chief bitched me out because you left town with the review coming up.”
“I’m available to the senator twenty-four/seven by phone.”
“Said that.”
“Tell them I’m on a fact-finding mission, and it’s necessary if they want a full report.”
She waited, but Nakamura was gone. Reception would return when she reached the ridge, but losing him was just as well. Her mind was on other things.
Nancie rounded a last curve by Hanley Park, and pulled up outside a sleek clean modern home with a breathtaking view of the Pacific. It had been her baby sister’s house, which Nancie inherited in trust when Bonnie and Mel were killed in a traffic accident on PCH. That was four years ago, when Nancie was between husbands, and serving as the Special Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Division. Now, four years later, with a new husband, a new job, and a new life in D.C., she returned as often as possible, but for reasons other than the house.